Quiz 2 - Part 1

This is a video from Levi jeans's "Go Forth" campaign. The video features "American Youth" moving quickly, from running in fields, to biking, to visiting waterfalls. The sound in the video is from Walt Whitman's "O, Pioneers!" The Levi company is attempting to sell the same identity that Barack Obama's campaign so successfully spearheaded: success in the face of struggle. As an unemployed college student, I want to feel that my "struggle", as self obsessed and narcissistic as that "struggle" may be, is actually going to bring about positive change not only for myself but for the world around me. The Levi company is playing on my hopes for a better world by saying that if I buy these jeans, I will be adopting an identity the portrays that. It's extremely ironic, considering that few pairs of Levi jeans actually come from the United States. Far from their San Francisco headquarters, in areas like Costa Rica, China, Korea and Mexico, Levi's jeans are assembled.

Klein discusses how "complicated motivations and stark inconsistencies" are a troubling facet of modern corporations in the "Patriarchy Gets Funky" chapter of No Logo. If Levi Jeans are selling an identity that we should be young, hardworking, prosperous Americans by buying Levis, while essentially selling the exact opposite by exploiting cheap overseas labor and poor working conditions, that seems to be a stark contrast.

Even if Levi Jeans were a positive, American corporation (they aren't by the way, especially if you happened to be in a Chinese prison in 1992) they are still playing on the same "un-stereotypes" that have become the norm in our advertisements. Guys making out with one another, racially diverse people joining hand in hand to run around a fire, etc. All of these constructs make it into the ad, via quick shots that could easily be missed. I'm conflicted because on one hand, I think it's a great thing for a national tv ad campaign to be promoting issues that we would never have seen 20 years ago, and on the other hand, I realize that the only reason these constructs are included in the ad is to sell me the identity that I'm not biased against homosexuality or a racist... if I wear Levi jeans. Klein quotes J. Walker Smith and Ann Clurman's Rocking the Ages "Diversity in all of its forms - cultural, political, sexual, racial, social - is a hallmark of this generation." (p.191) This has remained true for my generation, as evidenced not just by this ad, but with Barack Obama's presidential campaign, American Express's "Start Booming" ad campaign, and countless others playing on "poor hope".

When it comes to selling this identity successfully, this ad owns it. I do like this ad and many of my colleagues do as well. The original piece was directed by one of my favorites, John Hillcoat, and his camera work and imagery are brilliant. The selection of Whitman is perfect both in tone and in resonance. I don't even know if i disagree with many of the ads messages. I honestly do want to feel that if I'm a hard working person, I can bring about positive change. I just don't want to have to wear Levi's to do it.



This is a promotion for the MTV show "Skins". The show is an adaptation of a British television show that depicts underage kids engaging in sexual and drug related situations. This could be viewed as one of two things. It could be: A) A "concrete advantage" that Klein discusses. If there are no existing positive representations of high school students that are clearly discovering their own sexual identities, then possibly this show could at the very least be a way for kids to see some of the pitfalls of a wild sex and drug life, as exagerrated as MTV will surely make them. Or this situation could be: B) A gross exploitation of youth by selling advertisements through insinuated child pornography to a demographic that is in serious need of actual, positive sexual identities.

Based on how fucking awful MTV is, my current guess is that it's the latter. Many of the shows sponsors have since pulled their funding for the project, but given our nations love of controversial garbage, it will surely find an annyoing Progressive Auto Insurance saleswoman or some Free Credit Score douche bags to fill it's spots. The whole debacle is a shame because the British version of the show is a critically lauded expose on what is actually going on in the lives of kids. While American politics have traditionally ignored the realistic plights of the youth, the situation is exactly what Klein discusses when she says "The backlash that identity politics inspired did a pretty good job of masking for us the fact that many of our demands for better representation were quickly accomodated by marketers, media makers and pop-culture producers alike, though perhaps not for the reasons we had hoped." (p.190)

Even if the original intention for this show was to be a positive space for young adults to learn about sex and drugs, leave it to America's marketing whizkids to bastardize it. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that sex sells, but it's going to come at a serious cost when our politicians preach abstinance to kids and our media parades them having sex left and right.